We
have been at a technological point in our history for some time now where anyone
can make a video and upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube. Many people have taken this opportunity to
create “high quality” productions. Many people
spend so much time focusing on how good the video quality is, they forget about
the audio! I will now share with you
what I find to be the top five audio mistakes for YouTube videos.

1.
Pops and Click During Transitions

This
has to be one of the BIGGEST annoyances to me when it comes to video
editing. This happens all too
frequently, even in big budgeted projects.
This is very over looked. For the
most part, the art of long continuous camera shots and single takes are
gone. Everything now is fast paced, and
multi camera angles. A common YouTube
video format is harsh edit points that trim off every conceivable second of unimportant
video.

When
people do this, they forget to add some type of audio fade between clips. Most video
editing software allows a user to place an audio transition/crossfade right
onto the end of an audio clip! There is
no excuse to ignore this easy step! Not doing
so will cause the audio waveform to be cut off in the middle of its data
causing a very unprofessional pop or click.

Think
of it as running your finger over a smooth and jagged piece of metal: your
finger will gently glide over the smooth piece and be pleasing to the senses, but
run your finger over the “unfinished” jagged piece, and your senses will be
shocked as it cuts into your skin!

2. Clipping/Distorted Audio

This
is something very common with people who are just starting out and have some “really
cool” intro to their videos. You know
these videos; they want to create drama and suspense, so they crank up the
audio until the meter is stuck on red!
RED IS DEAD!

When
you are editing your video/audio, if you see your audio meters hitting red,
please pull the audio down. Not only
does it sound bad and unprofessional, but it will damage speakers over time. If you really want your sound as loud as it
can be, then put a compressor and limiter on the audio track. Set the compressor to what you want, and set
the limiter to -0.1db. That will give you
the loudest sound without clipping.

In this example from the YouTube channel RatedRR, you can hear CLEARLY at
1:47 that the music is cranked up way to high.
That’s sad, because this is a pretty professionally made video:

3.
Improper Panning

Now
I don’t want to get into extreme nerdiness about how something may be panned a few
degrees off, but what really gets me is a mono signal being sent to one speaker. Most microphones (that are not built into
your camera) are going to be recording into mono, meaning one channel of audio,
not stereo (left and right).

Lower
end video editing software, improper audio encoding, and other reasons cause
audio to potentially only be printed on one channel (usually the left). If you hear your audio coming only out of the
left or right speaker, CHANGE IT! Usually
this can just be fixed by changing your audio output to stereo or mono (in your
editing software), panning the audio to the middle, or doubling up the audio
and inverting the waveform.

In
this example from Rockstar Energy
Drink’s YouTube channel, at :36 seconds into the episode, the voice of
Tanner Foust is panned too much to the left.
It’s ironic because they show the audio team in the video:

4.
Poorly Mixed Levels

This
happens a lot. Music these days is very
compressed, meaning music doesn’t really get louder and quieter: it’s always
loud. Movies have luckily stayed away
from this. This is why when you watch a movie
the action scenes are louder than the rest.

This
should NOT be the case when you are making a simple tutorial video. If your into is ridiculously loud, but then
when you speak, I have to crank my speakers up, something is wrong. This can be fixed by adjusting the audio
level on your editing software, or by using a compressor to level out your audio.

5.
Copyright Infringement

Unfortunately,
most people don’t even think twice about this.
It is so tempting (and so easy) to make a video, and put your favorite
song in the background of it. It sounds
great right? Well, it’s illegal.

You can’t
put any song or sound effect (or any audio) you want in your video if you didn’t
create it or have a license to use it. It
may seem cool to your friends and the general public, but it won’t seem cool to
someone who has deep pockets and good lawyers once they realize that your video
is not generating them income even though the song they own the rights to is in
it.

There
are TONS of royalty free music available for purchase at low costs and even
some sites that offer free music
downloads. It may be thirty dollars
to you now for a song, but it could save you THOUSANDS in the future if you are
caught.

Conclusion

If
you want your video productions to sound better regardless if they are on
YouTube or not, then you should avoid making these five mistakes that happen
all too often. If you do, you’ll already
be way above the majority in terms of professionalism.